​March 27, 2026

You probably remember an important musicological moment in the 1965 classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. While pianist Schroeder is playing Beethoven’s Für Elise, Lucy interrupts him and the following dialogue takes place:
 
Lucy: "Everyone talks about how great Beethoven was. Beethoven wasn't so great."
Schroeder: "What do you mean, Beethoven wasn't so great?"
Lucy: "He never got his picture on bubble gum cards, did he? Have you ever seen his picture on a bubble gum card? Hmmm? How can you say someone is great who's never had his picture on bubble gum cards?"
 
Schroeder responds with a blank stare and the Peanuts characteristic “Good Grief.”
 
The other thing everybody talks about with Beethoven (although the “everybody” might be a smaller cohort here) is that Beethoven’s metronome was broken. I don’t think Beethoven’s metronome was broken. I’m not sure what Lucy thought about that, and Schroeder never mentioned it.
 
It’s true, occasionally Beethoven gives us a metronome marking that is outrageous, impossible and/or ridiculous, but that doesn’t happen often enough to dismiss all of his metronome markings entirely.
 
A little background info here:  The metronome was new technology in his day, invented in 1815. Beethoven was 45 years old. He was thrilled with this invention because it would mean musicians would know how fast or slow to play his music if he wasn’t around to tell them. Tempo was very important to Beethoven. We know from his correspondence that when learning of someone’s performance of one of his works, his first question would be “how was the tempo?”
 
Not only did the composer incorporate metronome markings in his compositions moving forward after learning of this new device, he even went back and wrote them in his existing works, often with the help of his nephew Karl and perhaps others. As is commonly known, Beethoven was deaf at this point, so he would not be able to hear the clicks of the metronome and accurately translate that into a metronome marking, so he had to enlist the help of a hearing person.
 
This is where some of the explanations of the outlier metronome markings come in. Were those rare instances of clear errors in the markings the result of something essentially lost in translation between the composer and the transcriber?  There is a wealth of literature out there on this topic for anyone interested in a deeper dive.
 
Naturally, this issue presents a conundrum to the thinking musician. How much weight do we give to Beethoven’s printed metronome indications?
 
I sometimes feel as if the very controversy gave carte blanche to some musicians to do whatever they felt like. Considering some of the early recorded performances from the first half of the 20th century, one would think musicians didn’t really care about such trivial matters as the composer’s wishes. I think there was also a trend towards slower is better, as in more profound. Is it almost as if some musicians were asking “how much can we wring out of this passage if we really stretch it out?”
 
This is not to say that these interpretations were wrong. They were just a function of their era and its zeitgeist, and frankly many are masterful in their own ways.
 
My generation of musician and prior, before historical performance practice really started to inform the music world, was saturated in overly-slow Beethoven, and that is a problem that can be hard to shake.
 
It goes something like this, as young musicians (teen and pre-teen) we listened to recordings of our favorite works over and over, and of course Beethoven was in the favorite category for most. Before YouTube and Spotify, when a record cost $5, we didn’t have access to multiple recorded performances, so whatever recording we owned became imprinted on us the way a baby bird imprints the image of its mother. In whatever way that work unfolded on our recording, that was the way the piece was meant to go, end of discussion. Of course, at that point, this musician wasn’t really even looking at the metronome marking or the score, I just loved the music. That can become a very difficult impression to shake as a person transitions from young music enthusiast to someone performing for a living.
 
I’ve always tried to approach every work as though I were doing the world premiere, even, and especially the really famous stuff. I just work with what I have in front of me, the score and existing scholarship that sheds light on the composer’s wishes or expectations.
 
There is a saying among musicians, “tradition is just the last bad performance.” That seems a little extreme to me, but it is good to take traditions with a grain of salt. We know that many composers did not care for some of the performance traditions that developed in their music. They just wanted it played the way they wrote it. That is sometimes easier said than done, as our initial mother imprint can stay with us in a powerful way.
 
The generations who followed mine, have not been so burdened by this first-impression prejudice. The historical performance practice movement encouraged us to re-think and re-consider how works should and could be interpreted based upon concrete evidence. The internet too has changed everything. Young musicians can listen to a nearly unlimited range of performances of most works and lay a broader foundation from which their knowledge, tastes and preferences can develop.
 
In physics, escape velocity is the minimum speed an object must attain to break free of the gravitational pull of another object. These strong first impressions of a work formed in childhood present a powerful interpretive gravitational pull on us as we form our own visions of a work as adults and professional performers. Breaking free of that pull and achieving interpretive escape velocity is a function of conviction, experimentation, confidence and pure repetition. It isn’t just about tempo, but also how a reconsidered tempo relates to other elements like articulation, phrasing, releases, and pacing.
 
For the first time, this week I felt I found my own personal escape velocity on the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. It was worth the effort. It felt to me like a Beethoven 7 for the 21st century, and one that was hopefully close to the composer’s concept from 1812.
 
Musicians needn’t be a slave to the metronome, but it’s good to consult it once in a while. You never know what insights it might provide.
 
Speaking of escape velocity, when Matthew Beck launched into the coda of Kevin Puts’ Marimba Concerto, (a section marked “as fast as possible”) I thought we were all headed for the moon. It was hair-raisingly exciting, bringing that remarkable work to an exhilarating finish. Matt is the LSO’s Principal Percussionist and was the featured soloist this weekend. I’ve always had the greatest respect for him as an artist when he is in the section, and he played beautifully as a soloist as well.
 
We opened the program with Sibelius’ Valse Triste, a work that goes from contemplative, palpable sorrow to unbridled abandon and back again, all in about 7 minutes. It was my first time conducting that work. I don’t know what took me so long. There is nothing else quite like it, even among Sibelius’ own works.
 
Congratulations to all my LSO colleagues on the stage Friday. What joy to embrace that music with you, and thanks for going along with me.
 
NEXT UP
 
Lansing Symphony Orchestra
Jon Nakamatsu, piano
Wharton Center for the Performing Arts
East Lansing, Michigan
Friday May 15, 2026
 
RACHMANINOFF         Variations on a Theme of Paganini
Jared MILLER              WORLD PREMIERE
RESPIGHI                     The Pines of Rome
 
#LansingSymphony #MatthewBeck #KevinPuts #Beethovenmetronome